Is it possible to set "global" parameters for a plugin with multiple functions?

Question

I've written a plugin that connects to another service to then display its data within my EE site.

Certain parameters are necessary for each tag - primarily things like a key, username. Is there a way to declare these once rather than within each function's parameter array? I'm currently doing that, which works, but seems… like a lot of repetition.

Answer 1

Just set them as class variables inside your plugin's __construct function.

function __construct()
{
    $this->my_api_key = 'foo';
    // OR
    $this->my_api_key = ee()->TMPL->fetch_param('my_api_key');
}

Then inside your other functions, just look at $this->my_api_key.

UPDATE

You can also do a hybrid of my and Yuri's answer:

function __construct()
{
    if($my_api_key = ee()->config->item('my_addon_my_api_key'))
    {
        $this->my_api_key = $my_api_key;
    }

    if($my_api_key = ee()->TMPL->fetch_param('my_api_key'))
    {
        $this->my_api_key = $my_api_key;
    }
}

Answer 2

I would recommend moving the configuration values to EE config (set them using EE config editor). They will be available as global config values then and you can access them like this: $this->EE->config->item('my_plugin_username)